Secret Service Dogs

by Maria Goodavage

  The White House incident wasn’t his first encounter with the Secret Service. He had been arrested twice in July for security violations at the White House and the Treasury Building.

  His father, exhausted from dealing with his son’s mental illness and the fallout from the fence jumping, broke down in tears during a video interview with the Post.

  “He wasn’t trying to harm the president. He was just going to ask for help. He’s not a criminal. He’s just mentally disturbed and he was just trying to talk to the president of the United States, and that’s the only way he felt like he’d be able to do it.”

  According to a Secret Service affidavit from the October incident, after his arrest, Adesanya told investigators he would keep trying to get back to the White House until he could speak with the president.

  As a result of the July incidents, he received in-hospital treatment but didn’t want to stay and didn’t have his prescriptions filled. He would be treated again after he jumped the fence and in 2015 would be referred to a mental health program aimed at diverting low-level offenders with mental health issues from jail to treatment.

  Adesanya was not armed when he scaled the White House fence. He was not wired. He was no terrorist.

  But the Secret Service couldn’t know that. He was strong, fast, determined, and a formidable fighter. He had put the ERT Tactical Canine Unit to its biggest real-life test to date, and it had done its job.

  As enthusiastic as the guys on the team are about their dogs stopping trouble, no one wants his dog to bite someone unless it’s absolutely necessary.

  “You want this guy to give up without having to bite him,” says Jim. “You really don’t want to have to do that. You want it to end peacefully. It’s better for everybody all around.

  “But at the same time if we find ourselves where the person gives us no other option, we aren’t willing to risk the safety of our team members, or a protectee, to make that happen.”

  Dog bites hurt, but using the less-than-lethal option of dogs may have saved Adesanya’s life.

  In the end, fence jumpers are just a small part of what ERT trains for. Team members estimate that 99 percent of their training is geared toward a full-fledged terrorist attack.

  “We have the best instructors in the world here,” says Marshall. “There’s nothing they haven’t trained us how to handle.”

  Hurricane had proven to Marshall that night that no matter what goes down in the future, he has the right stuff.

  “Whenever that day comes, I hope it will be me and him, front and center,” he says.

  When the story broke—often accompanied by a twenty-one-second video from a news crew showing Adesanya kicking and punching the dogs—the public reaction was off the charts.

  It’s one thing if someone tries to mess with the president. But don’t mess with the dogs who protect the president.

  The Secret Service public affairs team asked Marshall and Mike for photos of their dogs. They each had plenty of photos of them, but nothing that looked official. Because it was urgent, they found an office with a Secret Service flag and American flag and took their own photos with their cell phones. Marshall was glad Hurricane’s black coat hid his lumps and contusions.

  Public affairs tweeted separate photos of the dogs, showing them as their attentive and happy selves. They included personal details that sounded almost like brief dating app descriptions, minus the moonlit beach walks. (Jardan’s name was misspelled, but he didn’t care.)

  “USSS K-9 Jordan—black/tan Belgian Malinois, brown eyes, age 5, enjoys walks around White House, ready to work.”

  “USSS K-9 Hurricane—black Belgian Malinois, brown eyes, age 6, enjoys playing with his Kong toy, ready to work.”

  Special Agent Nicole M., who works in the Secret Service’s Office of Government and Public Affairs, says the tweets garnered the most significant public response for anything they’ve ever tweeted. Among the reactions on Twitter:

  “You go to jail if you jump the presidential fence . . . You kick A Secret Service dog I say public hanging is in order!”

  “Downsize USSS, hire more dogs.”

  “@SecretService He looks a Genuine very loyal, Canine Officer. Looks strong & fabulous.”

  “SecretService Beautiful boys. Big beautiful brown eyes! Strong and soulful! When the @WhiteHouse needs protecting, the K9s get it done!!!”

  “@SecretService Good job. No guns needed in this intrusion. I need these dogs.”

  In addition, an outpouring of e-mails, letters, and greeting cards swamped the office. And there were gifts. Gifts like nothing the office had ever received. Toys, shampoos, and containers of treats—many homemade, many gourmet—came in by the dozens.

  “There were amazing gift baskets, like something you’d send your parents on their fiftieth anniversary,” Marshall says. Only you probably wouldn’t send your parents desiccated bison-liver treats.

  The public affairs office fielded dozens of interview requests. The Secret Service does not readily trot its officers and agents out to the media, and with a case pending, the handlers couldn’t even talk to their friends and families about it, much less the press.

  The only people the handlers could really talk with were the other handlers, and the instructors. When Marshall, Mike, Hurricane, and Jardan showed up at RTC the day after the apprehension, the instructors were ecstatic.

  Not because there was a fight. But because the dogs had found themselves in an extraordinary situation the canine staff could never replicate for them, and they had responded magnificently.

  Brian was over the moon.

  “It took a huge dose of courage to do what Hurricane did,” he says. “You could tell that dog was going to give his life to win. He wasn’t going to quit.

  “It’s all the training, and the dogs’ relationships with their handlers. They look at their handlers and you can see how much they believe in them. They know, ‘When we’re together, we can win.’”

  Brian and the others were thrilled that America now knew about—and appreciated—these dogs. It was like when the media disclosed that a military working dog was part of the Navy SEAL Team 6 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in 2011. People suddenly realized the military uses dogs, and wanted to know all about the four-legged heroes.

  It wasn’t all pats on the back at RTC. There would be many dissections of the video of the apprehension, a second-by-second look at everything that went right, and a couple of things that needed improvement. The Murphy moment with the leash getting tangled on the aim point was a big one.

  “We learned from this and did what we needed to do,” Jim says. “We addressed the malfunction, and it won’t happen again. We have passion; we live and breathe this stuff. But no matter how well something goes, at the end of the day we ask, ‘What can we do better?’

  “We all felt like crap after the September incident. We’re alphas. We do not want to lose.”

  One of the improvements ERT made after that dark September day was to increase the number of dogs posted at the White House. Until then, there had generally been one dog in each area. Starting the next day, there would never be just one again.

  That strategy worked perfectly the first time it was put to the test. First Hurricane with his “Put me in, coach!” enthusiasm when Jardan was temporarily out of the game, and then Jardan, who couldn’t wait to go back in when his pal was getting punched again.

  They were the ultimate tag team.

  —

  Marshall did not expect, and did not receive, accolades from his fellow handlers. It’s all about busting chops on the team.

  “Did you even get out, or did you just open the door for him?” was a popular reprise.

  None of them would ever congratulate another teammate on a job well done. It doesn’t work like that. They just do what they’re supposed to do.

&
nbsp; “No matter what you did, no matter how crazy it was, you never hear another guy on your team saying, ‘Good job,’” says Marshall. “It would be kind of strange.”

  But guys around here will begrudgingly admit, when asked by someone not on the team, that they were proud of Marshall and Mike and the positive attention the dogs brought to the program.

  The timing could not have been better—not just for ERT but all of the Secret Service. A month earlier, when Omar Gonzalez managed to get over the fence and into the White House, the story and its repercussions made headlines for weeks.

  Other security lapses were also in the news, and Secret Service director Julia Pierson had resigned under intense pressure and bipartisan criticism of the agency.

  “We were getting crushed by the media,” says an officer, who couldn’t bring himself to watch the news at the time.

  It was a low point.

  This was the opposite.

  “They are the dogs that saved an agency,” a high-ranking agent told Marshall.

  Hector H., deputy special agent in charge at RTC, still beams when he talks about it.

  “We had been in a downward spiral with all of the negative press we’d been getting. It was a slump, with a lot of swings and misses.

  “But that day that Hurricane and Jardan did their job is one I’ll never forget. The next day I was driving to work with my chest out to here. I got to work and wanted to get them some steaks.

  “What they did, at least for a moment, was they restored the public’s belief in us. We do so many great things, but all the focus is on the mistakes. For a short span, thanks to two great dogs and handlers, we were on top of the world again.”

  CHAPTER 16

  THE DISPATCHER CALLS

  Take photos of your dog. Take lots of photos. Everywhere you go. At home. At work. Just keep a record. One day you’ll be very glad you did.

  The advice a seasoned dog handler gave Erica F. when she was starting on the Secret Service Explosive Detection Team made a lot of sense to her. She had spent eight years in the Army and had witnessed the bonds between soldier dogs and handlers. She had seen dozens of photos the handlers had proudly shown her of their “kids” on deployments and overseas duty.

  Her Secret Service sniffer dog, Noisy, was a natural poser. The German shepherd would look right into the lens, ears alert, eyes bright. He seemed to like the attention that came with the whole photo-taking process, and especially the praise after Erica snapped a few pics.

  They traveled to fifty locations by plane from 2009 until 2015, and Erica has photos from almost all of them. “I always found a way,” she says.

  Noisy starred in hundreds of photos, from Peru to Beverly Hills to the top of the National Cathedral—“It’s a lot of stairs.” The stairs were nothing for Erica, an ultrarunner who has done hundred-mile runs in under twenty-four hours. And they were no trouble for Noisy either. He looked like a German shepherd and chilled like a shepherd, but he worked with the tireless spirit of a Malinois.

  There’s an especially colorful photo Erica loves. It’s from a flower production and exporting facility in Bogotá, Colombia. Behind Noisy, bunches of vibrant carnations lie sideways, gently suspended in white cloth bundles. Noisy is staring directly at the camera. He looks effortlessly calm, but his eyes sparkle, his ears are perked, and he has an unmistakable happy smile on his face.

  “He was patient, but I’m sure sometimes he was like, ‘Mom, can we not have to take another photo?’” says Erica.

  One of her favorite photos is not from their travels. She took it in their living room, as Noisy was sitting facing the window and looking out intently, but serenely, through the open blinds. He is in profile, and appears strong and noble.

  But if you look closely, you can see that a strip of his front right leg has been shaved. What you can’t see is that his whole underbelly has also been shaved and is healing from recent surgery.

  About a week earlier, Erica had noticed Noisy’s belly was distended and brought him to Fort Belvoir for a check. After an ultrasound, they discovered he had a tumor on his spleen and he was starting to bleed internally. They opened him up immediately and removed the tumor.

  Erica watched the surgery through the observation glass, willing him to be OK, focusing on his breath.

  If you’re breathing, you’re alive, just keep breathing.

  She spent the next thirty-six hours at Noisy’s side, her upper half in the large, floor-level veterinary kennel, her lower half on the floor. She kept vigil as they transfused him and gave him all his IVs.

  When they came home, Noisy’s two Jack Russell terrier “siblings” were jubilant to see him again. He wagged when he saw them doing their happy dance. They kept him company, staying near him as he slept.

  Several days into his recovery, the vet called with the lab results. Very bad news, she warned. Noisy had hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive cancer of the cells that line blood vessels. Hemangiosarcoma has been referred to as “among the most challenging and mysterious diseases encountered in veterinary practice.” It’s not an uncommon cancer in dogs. German shepherds are afflicted by it more than most other breeds.

  The vet told her there is no cure. Noisy could be gone in a matter of a few weeks.

  Erica felt the floor drop out from under her.

  She determined she would savor whatever time she had left with him. She took more photos and spent as much time as she could right beside him. Once, on a good day, she even brought him out to training. He had always loved his work, and she knew he must be missing it. He was almost his old self that day, wrapped in the thrill of the hunt and the joy of the reward that came with finding the scent of explosives.

  Erica had hoped to get him into a study that could one day benefit other dogs with this form of cancer. But eleven days after his diagnosis, she knew it was too late. Noisy was beyond tired, his gums had grown pale, and his stomach was starting to look like it did the first time. She brought him to the vet, not knowing if he would be making the return trip.

  His blood work showed something bad was going on inside again. The veterinarian gave Erica options that could keep him alive a little longer. Options that wouldn’t be easy for him, including opening him up again.

  Erica considered them, but only briefly. She knew anything she did to keep him going was for her, not for him. She didn’t want to put him through anything else. He had been through enough.

  He was tired and seemed remarkably relaxed. She couldn’t fathom waiting until he was in terrible pain to let him go. She sat down next to him and bent close for a little one-to-one talk as she cradled his head in her arms.

  “You’ve been the best dog in the world,” she told him, trying to maintain her usual calm, sure composure. “But if you’re tired, it’s OK to go.”

  He fell asleep and started snoring in her arms. She felt some comfort that he could be at peace in their last moments together.

  The vet and a couple of techs came in. They put a blanket under him. He was still sleepy. Erica got behind him. As they administered the drug that makes him unconscious, she kissed his head tenderly. When she was ready, they gave him the final drug.

  “And then it just stops. Everything stops,” she later told her husband. “And then you’re just kind of sitting there, like ‘What do I do now?’”

  She caressed his fur, felt his skin, still warm, and cried her heart out.

  She walked out alone, with his leash and a gut-wrenching emptiness.

  A few days later, she was back at the White House, working as a regular Uniformed Division officer.

  On the way to work, she would look over her shoulder, expecting to see Noisy there. The absence of his breathing, of his constant companionship, made the long ride from Northern Maryland a lonely one. She never realized how much she talked to him until he wasn’t there to talk to anymore.

  Durin
g breaks and downtime, she would often find herself scrolling through her phone and looking at all the photos she had taken of him over the years. It sometimes made her feel the enormity of the loss even more, but mostly it was comforting to see him smiling back at her from their adventures around the world.

  When she had Noisy at her side, she never minded working overtime. Whenever she was with him, no matter how hard they worked and how late the hour, it felt more like she was hanging out with a buddy. Now, no matter how friendly and empathetic her fellow officers, she felt part of her was missing.

  “I’m kind of an introvert as a person, so getting to be around your buddy all the time made it so easy. When we were done with a sweep, there would always be someone to sit with,” she says.

  Because of the canine program’s long-standing “one and done” policy, few handlers ever go back into canine. At first, Erica didn’t want to even try to get another dog. She could never replace Noisy and didn’t want to go through the pain of losing a working dog again.

  But then a handler left to take a job at another agency, and Erica decided to apply for the vacancy. She had to submit her application just like everyone else and pass a PT test (not a problem).

  The program had a dog who needed a new handler as soon as possible, and here was this handler, all trained. Erica was offered the job.

  A couple of handlers who had also been given another dog after their first dog died took her aside. They told her that she’d probably want to keep a distance at first but that eventually the new dog would win her over.

  “Don’t worry,” handler Tim D. told her. “Noisy will always have a piece of your heart no matter how much you end up loving your new dog. It’ll take time, but you’ll grow to love him. They have a way of invading your heart.”

  On a warm August morning in 2015, Erica and a black German shepherd named Kid officially started their partnership. Part of her didn’t feel she was ready. The dog looked quizzically at this new person who had taken him out of his kennel at RTC.

  She introduced herself.